First part of an interview, by Kelly Weinersmith, about my new book, LIFE LESSONS FROM A PARASITE, for the American Society of Parasitologists newsletter and blog.

 

Dr. John Janovy Jr.

Interview by Kelly Weinersmith

“Yes, I am completely convinced that the allure of parasitology is closely related to our ability to envision ourselves infected. No one can prove what happens to a person's mind as a result of imagined parasitic worms, although it’s easy to predict what happens when that same mind is infected with certain ideas."

- John Janovy Jr,

Dr. John Janovy Jr is a former ASP President, co-author of textbook from which many of us first learned about parasites (Foundations of Parasitology available for free download on the American Society of Parasitologists web site - https://www.amsocparasit.org/), an incredible parasitologist, and a prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction. John’s new book is Life Lessons from a Parasite: What Tapeworms, Flukes, Lice, and Roundworms Can Teach Us About Humanity’s Most Difficult Problems. John applies the lessons he has learned through decades spent studying the natural world to problems like immigration, the differences between kinds and individuals, problem-solving, what happens when people get “infected” with parasitic ideas, and much more.

Life Lessons with Parasites is both fun and insightful. It includes some delightful lines that made me chuckle out loud, such as this one: “The first rule of fine dining is to never invite a parasitologist to dinner.” I had the opportunity to interview John about Life Lessons from a Parasite, and his career as an author:

KW: What motivated you to write Life Lessons from a Parasite? Was there a particular event that motivated you to write this book, or has the idea been percolating for awhile?

JJ: This book probably started with a lunch conversation maybe four years ago. with a couple of retired biologist colleagues, about our careers. That's when I started reflecting on what I'd learned from parasites, in addition to what I'd learned about them. But from watching students develop as scientists over the past fifty years, it has always been obvious that they were acquiring a repertoire of transferrable skills and ideas that they would not have had if they'd never started doing research on parasites. It's also seemed like parasites were far more effective as teachers than were free-living forms, because parasite lives can be so complex. So, I just decided to make that experience the focus of my next big non-fiction project.

KW: When you and I see a parasite, we see something complex and beautiful. This is, of course, not how much of the general population see parasites. But rather than writing something easy like Life Lessons from Cuddly Panda Bears or Life Lessons from Snuggly Puppies, you took on parasites. What was your strategy for making parasites more relatable and likable for a general audience in Life Lessons from Parasites?

JJ: I tried to personalize the parasitology experience in an educational way, using examples of people who were focused on a problem, or a kind of puzzle, that intrigued them to the point of making them devote time, resources, and a significant part of their lives to the solution. I assumed readers would be hooked by the mystery and someone‘s attempt to solve it, so would get past the fact that I was writing about parasites. The first few chapters are really about humans studying nature and what happens when those humans decide to study nature, even though, or maybe especially because, that part of nature is uncooperative and resistant to discovery. In other words, I tried to tell stories of humans who were fascinated by these mysterious organisms. This book is really about curiosity as a driving force in human behavior and parasites are the vehicle.

KW: Which of the books that you’ve written was hardest to write, and why?

JJ: My chapters of Foundations of Parasitology were by far the most difficult writing assignment of my whole career. Each of those five editions that I contributed to involved two years of almost full-time work, and a student research/editorial assistant (usually recruited from my BIOS 101 classes). I screened maybe 20,000 abstracts for each edition, read maybe 5,000 papers, and extracted information from about a thousand of those papers, information that would end up sometimes as a single sentence. The textbook user was the driving force in these revisions, a very different audience than reads other kinds of literature. It was always a focus on what some 19~ or 20-year old college student needed to learn, rather than what I personally wanted to write or what some airport shopper wanted to read. But the end products were always very satisfying!

KW: I tried my hand at fiction once, and failed miserably. Writing fiction is a very different skill than writing non-fiction! How does the process of writing fiction and non-fiction differ for you? 

JJ: I’m not really sure it differs all that much for me, although I’m obviously not a best-selling fiction writer! In my fiction pieces, I start with the ending, then start tracing what has to happen to bring this thing to closure. I’m not a good story-teller and have always been far more interested in animals than in people, so that’s a problem with my fiction. All the fiction I’ve written has more to do with events and ideas than with interpersonal relationships, and the characters are caught up in situations and dragged along rather than battling one another or pursuing romance. The only one of my fiction pieces that has what you might call a narrative arc is Tuskers, a project that my agent tried very hard to sell, going through 22 rejections, before turning it back to me to do whatever I wanted with it. Our ESPN daughter demanded that it be self-published, so I did it. It’s about the OU vs. Nebraska football game in 2090 and the Nebraska mascot is a resurrected live woolly mammoth.

 

Comments on the keynote speech to Alpha Chi Honor Society

Speech at Louisville – John Janovy, Jr.

Last fall I was invited to give the keynote address at the national Alpha Chi convention in Louisville, Kentucky. Alpha Chi is a national honors organization; most of the chapters are at smaller colleges and universities; students in the top 10% of their class are eligible for membership. The invitation was issued by Bill Clemente, an English professor at Peru State College, who is vice-president of the national council. The convention was held last week, April 6-9; attendance was maybe five or six hundred, including students and faculty members. The invitation to be their keynote speaker was a major honor. The title of that talk was, of course, “Life Lessons from a Parasite.”

The title was chosen mainly because the Alpha Chi theme is Transcending Boundaries, and of the things that parasites do well, at least as species, it’s to transcend boundaries, particularly ecological ones. Thus the life cycle of a typical trematode is wonderful material to use metaphorically, and of course I chose Posthodiplostomum minimum as my subject. This trematode lives as an adult in fish-eating birds; eggs are shed and first stage larvae develop in snails; cercariae emerge from snails, penetrate small fish, and develop into infective stages. These larvae end up in various tissues, including the eyes. Prevalence varies over the years, depending on how the South Platte River flows, which in turn is based on Rocky Mountain snowpack.

You can see immediately where this narrative is going. A parasite that infects the eyes influences how the host sees the world. A parasite whose prevalence in fish depends on Rocky Mountain snowpack is a parasite whose life is controlled, in part, by events that are distant in time and space. These kinds of relationships are easy to turn into metaphors. For example, we might ask the question: what do the following items have in common?

Zika virus, Ebola virus, influenza, HIV, Cryptosporidium parvum, MRSA, mumps, measles, tuberculosis, Dengue, Giardia intestinalis, West Nile virus, cholera, Cyclospora cyatenensis, SARS, MERS, Lyme borreliosis, poliovirus.

The answer is pretty obvious, namely, that they move through populations by way of various mechanisms; some folks get infected; others are shielded or immune; and everyone, especially people in positions of power and responsibility, needs to understand both the mechanisms by which these agents move through populations and the consequences of such movement. We could easily, of course, ask the same question about the following items:

Snapchat, rumors, fake news, smart phones, money, handguns, rap music, selfies, Pokémon Go, torn jeans, Middle Eastern names, “immigrant,” plastic water bottles, “LGBTQ,” “abortion,” recipes, bad ideas, lettuce and broccoli, car parts.

Again, the answer is pretty obvious, namely, that they move through populations by way of various mechanisms; some folks acquire or accept them; others are shielded from them, or reject them; and everyone, especially people in positions of power and responsibility, needs to understand both the mechanisms by which these agents move through populations and the consequences of such movement. Furthermore, some are only words (LGBTQ, immigration, abortion) that elicit strong responses in people, others provide power (money, guns), and still others enter our personal realms by way of the media and because of distant events over which we have little or no control (Middle Eastern names).

At some point toward the end of this talk I used the term “divisiveness” as an example of a meme that had taken on significant power in recent decades. In other words, it is an entity that is moving through our population, producing reactions, depending on the prior exposure of the recipient. During the question and comment session that followed, two students made comments that I thought were truly profound.

One student indicated that I had characterized the meme “divisiveness” as negative, whereas in the past, it had been a driving force for people to participate in the political process, and indeed to effect change. I agreed with her completely. The other student asked whether I thought that divisiveness could function as a vector, carrying along other memes, or enhancing the extent to which those carried-along memes were accepted or rejected. I had to not only agree completely with this student, but it seemed to me that his idea might be a great one for a senior thesis in communications or journalism.

Descriptions from The Gideon Marshall Mystery Series

I know, they're not about parasites, except for parasitic ideas that get into the heads of powerful people and make them not only do stupid stuff, but also drag others along with them. I'm also posting these descriptions here, instead of on the Friday Coffee blog because a publisher to which I've submitted Africa Notes: Reflections of a Semi-Educated Tourist, said that a blog link to a sample of previous writing was okay as part of the proposal. So I put that sample up on fridaycoffee. Here are the four (so far) Gideon Marshall Mysteries:

BE CAREFUL, DR. RENNER

Dr. Clyde Renner is dead, apparently of a heart attack. Leonard Branch, campus cop at Renner’s small liberal arts college, is convinced there’s more to Renner’s demise and Gideon Marshall, paleontologist, plays host to a parade of characters with a stake in the autopsy. In the end, Marshall discovers not only the perfect murder, but also ideal weapons of mass destruction.

Dr. Clyde Renner, professor of geology, chair of the department, world renowned expert on volcanoes and earthquakes, and intellectual giant, is dead, apparently of a heart attack, alone in his insect-infested house. Leonard Branch, campus cop at Renner’s small liberal arts college in Iowa, is convinced there’s more to Renner’s demise than appears on the death certificate. Gideon Marshall, paleontologist, now acting chair, plays host to a parade of characters, including Renner’s bullied secretary and accountant, a belligerent female prof, an untenured young scientist and his hot-headed coed paramour, her wealthy helicopter parent, Renner’s estranged gay son and his computer geek husband, and the college president; all are involved in various ways with Clyde Renner’s distinguished career and all have a stake in the autopsy results. In the end, Marshall accepts the fact that he’s probably discovered not only the perfect murder, but also ideal weapons of mass destruction.

THE STITCHER FILE

After the brutal execution-style shooting of a geology prof, paleontologist Gideon Marshall gets dumped into an even more complex mess than the one a year earlier in this sequel to BE CAREFUL, Dr. RENNER. Marshall is put under house arrest because of a note found in the deceased’s hands. RENNER, it turns out, was a victim of a perfect murder scheme. STITCHER is a different matter.

With another death at his small, Forbes-listed, liberal arts college in Iowa, Gideon Marshall, unwilling and temporary chair of the Geology Department, gets dumped into even a bigger and more complex mess than he experienced as a result of the first one a year earlier. Instead of the simple heart attack and stroke that felled his predecessor, which was the perfect murder of a despised faculty bully, Marshall now deals with the brutal execution-style shooting of a geology prof, this one a female whose personality has earned her the nickname “Becky Bitcher.” THE STITCHER FILE is a sequel to BE CAREFUL, Dr. RENNER. In THE STITCHER FILE Marshall is put under house arrest because of a note found in the deceased’s hands. The victim is found on an ice-covered railroad crossing by the Geology Department accountant. Law enforcement descends on the site, and Marshall ends up with an ankle monitor. Many of the same players that plagued Gideon Marshall in BE CAREFUL, DR. RENNER re-appear in new roles, along with new characters from various law enforcement agencies. RENNER, it turns out, was a victim of a perfect murder scheme. STITCHER is a different matter.

THE EARTHQUAKE LADY

The brutal murder of a scientist at geologist Gideon Marshall’s upscale liberal arts college in Iowa remains unsolved. A request from the Department of Criminal Investigation, to determine the origin of dirt in ten plastic bags, sends Marshall on a trek through Oklahoma oil fields and turns him into a crucial prosecution witness whose testimony will have global implications.

A brutal murder at Gideon Marshall’s upscale liberal arts college in Iowa remains unsolved. A Department of Criminal Investigation detective and the Polk County medical examiner show up in Marshall’s office on a bleak Friday afternoon with the victim’s autopsy report, a box of plastic bags, and a request to determine the origin of dirt samples. Paleontologist Marshall is about to become a crucial prosecution witness because of his ability to identify materials in those bags. The DCI request sends Marshall and his wife Mykala on an adventure that begins with concealed carry training and weapons purchase, continues on a trek through Oklahoma oil fields posing as inspectors, and ends with an arrest that is certain to bring Marshall into direct confrontation with Big Oil, Big Money, and the Department of Defense.
THE EARTHQUAKE LADY is the third Gideon Marshall Mystery. The stories center around the potential danger of scientific discoveries and the sometimes eccentric lives of people who make them. Marshall is dragged into efforts by various people to control the discoveries of a genius-level scientist, a former faculty member in his department, this unhappy woman—Rebecca Stitcher—who was the murder victim. Stitcher’s theoretical research in geology could empower a nation to produce ideal weapons of mass destruction, namely large volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis occurring at times and places chosen on purpose. Needless to say, there many people interested in this possibility, and all of them eventually descend on Gideon Marshall’s small liberal arts college in Iowa. As Marshall’s perceptive wife Mykala says to him: “Gideon, it’s just beginning.”

THE WEATHERFORD TRIAL

Geology prof Charlie Weatherford is arrested for murder of a colleague who’s maybe solved the problem of making big earthquakes occur on purpose with fracking techniques. Connie Bergen, attorney for the company supporting Weatherford for proprietary access to research, is sent to defend him. The trial brings out the deadly potential of scientifically illiterate men in high places.

An execution-style murder, a dashing young prof, competing expert witnesses, and a Big Oil civil lawyer dragged into his first criminal case combine to uncover the power of belief regardless of truth.

Dr. Charlie Weatherford, dashing young geology prof at Cavanaugh College in Iowa, is arrested for the murder of a colleague, Rebecca Stitcher, reputed to have solved the problem of making major earthquakes occur on purpose, using hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) techniques developed by the petroleum industry. Connecticut “Connie” Bergen, a civil attorney for Stevens Oil, Inc., the company supporting Weatherford for proprietary access to research results, gets on a company jet bound for Des Moines, sent by owner Delmar Stevens himself to defend Weatherford. This is Bergen’s first assignment in a criminal case, and he’s met at the airport by Amber Buchanan, a mysterious woman with various roles in Stevens Oil, Inc., whose job evidently is to guide him through the legal labyrinth surrounding this murder. It’s not obvious that anyone, even Weatherford, cares whether he’s convicted or acquitted.

The Weatherford Trial leads us through the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation witness protection efforts, Bergen’s handling of forensic geology, competing expert witnesses, and Bergen’s education at the hands of Amber, until the jury adjourns to arrive at a verdict. The Weatherford Trial is the fourth Gideon Marshall Mystery. As with the first three books, this one brings out the deadly potential of seemingly arcane ideas, the phenomenon of scientific illiteracy in high places, and the power of belief regardless of truth.